What? If I want to remove the release notes, I have to remove the entire freakin’ system? You pretty much do, so what do we do to get around this? Create a fake package, or use one of our other custom packages, and have it provide indexhtml. Time to go find the strongest drink I can possibly locate. Gasoline should do!

The wft is….it is the system wanting to remove 367 other packages just because I want to remove just one package, and that package being nothing more than release notes. What was hard to understand about that one?

Bowser

The wtf is the point of this blog. What a waste of time to read. WFT to you

Tom

Note that the stupid trolls are both windows users.
I at least thought it was funny.

nesian

I notice that a lot of open source projects have a sort of invisible barrier to customize/build, that developers/advanced users of FOSS don’t see. For example, it’s easy to say that Firefox is open source, but you need Visual Studio 2005 to compile it from source. Another example is the roadsend PHP… They offer the source for free, but how many people from the windows world would know how the f%ck to compile it (written in scheme i recall?!)?!? Just a thought I had.
It would seem, if you looked at this cynically, that this is an attempt by the CentOS team to prevent trivially easy forking and/or rebranding of CentOS. While I’m sure that’s not the case, it looks kinda bad, they should be notified…

shamil

I hate meta packages in this sense. Usually i experience their downfall when installing a desktop environment. Apt-get install kde, install every single piece of kde software period. Then you figure that you’ll just slim down the DE’s software suite by removing a lot of programs. So, something like removing kpdf will in fact bring up a prompt for removing the whole DE.

I love meta packages in this sense. Making a meta package like what mandriva does. They make meta packages for stuff like installing the latest kernel. This keeps you from having to go in and update the kernel yourself every time a new version comes out.

I have mostly experienced evil with meta packaging. Best to keep meta packaging to teeny weeny things. This is why i like distros who build up the chosen DE package by package, such as kubuntu where uninstalling something like kpdf wont uninstall the whole DE. This is also brings up some other stuff, choose your meta packages carefully. You’ll obviously get better results say you install kde-core instead of the meta package kde.

But, this blog explains one of those uncontrollable natures of centos with something the user doesn’t get control of removing some notes. Does centos have a network install? Sort of like debian net install where you can pick and choose and build up your system as you desire, where you could pick and choose your meta packaging as well.

Kalle S

If I read your yum output correctly, you could remove the release notes without problems if you provide a new package with a /etc/redhat-release file.

ssam

Ubuntu’s meta packages are much better than they used to me. They differentiate between depends, recommends, and suggests. You can now remove a lot of things and still keep ubuntu-desktop meta package.

i am sure RPM has different grades of dependency, but maybe someone needs to go through, and improve them.

(if you find a dependency silliness in ubuntu, report a bug it usually will get fixed.)

haha, I love the comments. Ya, metapackages are good when done correctly, and can go horribly wrong when done incorrectly. This was just a funny that has been noted to CentOS. You can do a network install of CentOS, which is the way I initially went with the install.

@Browser: you aren’t even one of the cool Windows kids, you still use XP 😛

web123

try :
# rpm -e –force centos-release-notes

But as yum suggest, it’s not a good idea.

RW

HAHA!

For you Windows guys reading this, it’s really in your best interests to just make a confused face and move on – seriously, you just make yourself look like a dumbass with your comments.

With respect to building Firefox, it *is* open source, and any linux distribution has all the development tools you need. If you don’t like the fact that Windows is a crippled OS in that regard, then complain to Microsoft.

I’d just like to point out that you don’t run into this problem on a distro where dependencies are not automatically resolved… in other words, Slackware. Think about that the next time you decide to troll a Slackware user (and yes, we do indeed have a package manager, and it works quite nicely, thank you very much.)

Just my two cents.

Jim

Funny stuff… I’m dealing with the same thing while slimming down a CentOS based network appliance to be used for testing at remote WAN sites. I want basic Gnome, Firefox, Wireshark, D-ITG, Jperf, nmap via FreeNX, along with ssh and normal network CLI tools, services like ftp, tftp, etc to support remote IOS loads, syslog and Netflow analysis tools etc. The basic Gnome Desktop metapackage includes Evolution. If I try to remove it post-install, it complains that gnome-panel depends on evolution-data-server. WTF??? 😉

Subscribe to nixternal.com

Archives

Who is Richard A. Johnson?

My name is Richard A. Johnson. I am a professional developer, as
well as an open source enthusiast, advocate, and author. I spend
any free time I can get cycling.

Back in 1994 I was introduced to the world of open source
software by installing Linux on a PC I had purchased from the
Navy Exchange. At that time I had no idea what I was going up
against, but never once did I let myself get frustrated, as
Windows had already done that to me. Since then, I have
completely immersed myself into the open source world and have
been an active contributor.